Movie review: 'My Kid Could Paint That'

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, January 3, 2008

Olmstead became an overnight sensation, with her canvases suddenly selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Until, that is, a report on "60 Minutes" cast doubt on the provenance of the paintings, suggesting that Marla's father had a significant hand in creating them.
With extraordinary access to the Olmsteads, who invited Bar-Lev inside their home and allowed him to interact closely with Marla, the filmmaker begins to craft a thoughtful study of the often cruel way in which the media builds people up and then quickly tears them down. But the closer he gets to the Olmstead clan, the more Bar-Lev becomes an unwitting participant in the larger drama of whether Marla is the sole person responsible for her paintings.
What follows is a kind of snake-that-eats-its-own-tail saga, a documentary that's as much about its own creation as it is about this young, guileless-seeming little girl. With a tip of the hat to the great "Capturing the Friedmans," Bar-Lev shows us that, when it comes to these sorts of digital-era, he-said, she-said disputes, the truth is inevitably in the eye of the beholder (or, at least, the guy holding the video camera). Along the way, he also offers a fascinating critique of the contemporary art world, where hype easily becomes established wisdom and where no one seems to know exactly what makes art "great."
Does the very presence of Bar-Lev's camera ultimately make it impossible for us to ever see the "real" Marla? Were the Olmsteads using Bar-Lev to validate the legitimacy of their daughter's work? Or is it Bar-Lev who is really using the Olmsteads, so that he can make his name as the journalist who finally cracked this uncrackable case?
"My Kid Could Paint That" offers no easy answers to any of these questions - but it will leave you debating them for hours.